Everfresh Flavors The Iced-tea Market

A thirst for prepared iced tea has driven still another beverage marketer to that drink.

With biggies Coke and Pepsi muscling into what is believed a $400 million-a-year category, smaller firms such as EverFresh Beverages USA like what they read in the tea leaves.

This Franklin Park-based juice and drinks firm, re-energized by a buyout from outside investors, has moved in with a line of bottled, ready-to-drink iced teas that include diet versions in an assortment of flavors.

Bumping heads with longtime leader Lipton, which has a marketing partnership with Pepsi-Cola, Nestea and others, is a challenge for EverFresh, which thinks it might have a niche opportunity with its flavors.

There are other firms with flavors, including those marketed by Tetley Inc., a name also long synonymous with tea, in a marketing pact with A&W Brands, a soft drink firm known for its root beer.

``We like our prospects with our flavors,`` says Eliot Kaufman, EverFresh`s marketing director. Flavors include lemon, diet lemon, raspberry, diet raspberry and orange. It`s a good bet that other flavors will come out depending on distribution and consumer acceptance.

EverFresh is on the ground floor of distribution, hitting some supermarket chains nationally and convenience stores just this month.

Only a small segment of the $400 million prepared iced-tea market is in food chains, but in supermarket aisles the market is growing. Ready-to-drink iced tea was a $44 million business in supermarkets in 1991, up 34 percent from a year earlier, reports Information Resources Inc. First-quarter business this year was up another 18 percent. Big players have been Lipton, Snapple and Nestea, now a joint venture of Coca-Cola Co. and Nestle.

With all the heavies into the act, EverFresh`s Kaufman predicts that the market can double this decade; all EverFresh wants is a decent slice of that business.

- Atari Entertainment`s top two executives-Lawrence Siegel and Dana Plotkin-have left the Lombard-based company to form a firm to market entertainment software. The unnamed company will be based in the Chicago area. Siegel and Plotkin said discussions are being held with venture capital and software firms in this country and Japan. Siegel had been president and chief executive of Atari Entertainment, Plotkin executive VP and chief operating officer. The Lombard operation will be downscaled, with marketing of video games, headed by the Lynx label, shifted back to the parent Atari Corp.`s headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif. Lombard will remain a software development office for Atari.

- Procter & Gamble`s new Crest Complete toothbrush, sold at retail in Houston, San Antonio and Austin in a test since August, is moving into national distribution, but the $2-plus brush will be available only as a giveaway through dentists. Distribution at retail is expected later this year. Procter sales representatives are calling on 50,000 dentists, and about a third of them have ordered 9 million toothbrushes. D`Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles-New York does advertising on Crest toothpaste, which may have a category-leading 35 percent share of that market. Leo Burnett Co. has the assignment on Crest Complete. The agency has produced a TV commercial to air in early August that will advise consumers that the toothbrush will be available at dentists. Crest Complete`s competition includes Gillette`s Oral B, tops in market share at 30 to 35 percent.

There`s peace finally at the McElligott Wright Morrison White agency in Minneapolis. The principals, who have been airing their dirty laundry, have decided to end their public squabbling. Tom McElligott, who owns 54 percent of the agency, survived a buyout-ouster. McElligott says he expects the two-year- old agency to ``wind down`` and close in about three months, in which time clients and other principals will find new homes. Partners Tony Wright and John Morrison have been meeting with officials at DDB Needham New York about working there; some clients are expected to follow them if they join that agency. Rob White reportedly is leaning to Fallon McElligott in Minneapolis, an agency co-founded by McElligott, who hasn`t decided what he`ll do. U.S. Shoe and Washington Post are two clients of McElligott Wright Morrison White. The agency acknowledged that its shouting matches embarrassed the staff, clients and industry. A client told this column: ``These guys acted like kids playing in a sandbox.``

On the move: Nancy G. Patierno joined Foote, Cone & Belding Chicago as an account director; the agency named Amy Aschenbrenner and Karen Becker media planners. . . . John Von Thaden was promoted to account executive at the Family Channel`s Chicago advertising sales office.

Phoenix-based Dial Corp. reached into Procter & Gamble`s ranks in Cincinnati for a new boss of its biggest unit. Karen Hendricks, a 21-year veteran of Procter, was named executive VP and general manager of Dial Consumer Products` Personal Care Division. Dial soap is this unit`s top brand. - Willie Doyle, associate media director of Y&R-San Francisco, next Monday becomes advertising manager, a new post, at Lands` End Inc. in Dodgeville, Wis. Doyle, whose responsibilities include media, will report to Mike Atkin, VP of marketing.